We've all been there: you desperately want to write (or paint, or draw, or work, or read, or literally anything you can imagine) but every time you sit down to do it, your brain just makes those old dial-up internet noises at you.
I deal with this frequently. In fact, I would say that most of my writing experience is just one long period of writer's block.
So here is a short list of tips for things that I have actually used to try and beat writer's block.
1. Take some time to do read something completely new
Sometimes the reason that we get writer's block is because we've been so focused on one thing that we have exhausted all our ideas. This is why taking some time to focus on something else can be really helpful.
One important example of this (especially for writers) is getting really stuck in your own genre. If you only ever read the genre that you write (or just a few limited genres), you're going to be exposed to a lot of the same kinds of plot progressions. That's not always a bad thing - for example, in romance novels, you expect a happily-ever-after ending following all kinds of emotional hijinks.
But if you're a fantasy writer, and you only ever read fantasy, you might miss out on opportunities to grow your writing practice in different ways. Fantasy (and sci-fi) tend to be very plot-driven which is fine. However, if you're only reading fantasy, instead of any other genres that tend to be more character-driven, you can wind up with a generic protagonist and antagonist and lose out on opportunities to make your readers root for them. If your readers can't root for your characters, then they might not finish your book.
Plus, there are plenty of things to be learned from reading other genres: romance can teach you about character development, horror can teach you how to build fear, thrillers teach you about the successful use of suspense, and mysteries will teach you about the importance of foreshadowing.
2. Find another way to channel your creativity
This is something that really helps me, especially when I feel the need to create but there are no words coming out of my brain.
No one has only one area of interest, especially us creative types. It can be really helpful when we're blocked in one of those areas to do something else that's creative, in the hopes that focusing on something else will allow your brain to come up with things in the background.
Since the pandemic started, I've been cooking more and also I've worked on a paint-by-numbers. I would sketch if I knew how.
Creativity is a discipline, and even if you're unable to use it one way, it's important to keep using those muscles in other ways. Just to stay sharp.
3. Give yourself a set time to write
This is something that really helped me when I was in grad school working on papers and such.
You give yourself a set time frame everyday, which for me was three hours in the morning, and then when that time is up, you move on to something else.
This helps because it takes the pressure off of you in order to come up with a set number of words, or to be very productive and studious.
You absolutely don't need to go by my grad school expectations for myself - looking back, that was kind of insane. I'm shocked that I was able to keep up that pace every single day.
The real strength was that it was consistent - I would sit down at about 9:30 every morning, and I would work until I got hungry (so normally about noon). And then I would be done for the day.
If I have learned anything from grad school, or from participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for the initiated), it's that consistency is key.
Hopefully this was helpful. Let me know if you have any other tips for beating creativity block that you want to share!
Love,
Tori
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